


The Women In Two Black Veils

by DinosaurTheology



Series: Johnny and Dora [11]
Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), Chicago PD (TV)
Genre: Conversations, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, For Science!, Fun, Late Night Conversations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-09-11
Packaged: 2018-08-10 02:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7826965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles throws Jake a bachelor party. Jake discovers that Charles has a hidden talent and makes new friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. You'll Miss Your First Anniversary

**Author's Note:**

> The denizens herein are not mine, alas. I love the 99, and also love SVU and CPD. So, for the penultimate in my wedding series, two great tastes needed to go great together.

It was a bachelor party planned by Detective Charles Boyle. That can mean only strange music, stranger company and food that was downright terrifying. Jake steels himself for it, though. Charles is his best friend, after all, and there isn't too much mischief you could get into at the Kaia Wine Bar at 1614 3rd Avenue, right?

Right?

Well, there won't be any pig uterus, at least, like there had been on Charles' last birthday at that little Vietnamese dive Mama's Voi Trung Happy Hut. He loved the little guy like a brother but... it was not a night that Jake's intestines ever wanted to remember. He's over this total fascination with "the real, nitty-gritty of South Asian cooking," thank whatever gods may be, and has moved onto jabbering incessantly about something called a Boerewors rol. The pictures Jake has seen look like of like a kielbasa dog, so that's cool. Unless something horrible is hiding it it which with Charles... it's always a possibility.

They meet most of the rest of the party a couple of blocks from the 99. Jake thinks they're being mugged at first and, well, who could blame him? The man is big like Terry but not as hard and about Scully's age but in every conceivable way is the anti-Scully. He's got the fairest pecan skin tone that Jake has ever seen, arresting pale green eyes and looks more than a little bit like some pimp escaped from the dark days of pre-Giuliani New York. The beautiful women hanging off his arm, each wearing jeans or a skirt so tight that they'll have to be cut off those long, slender legs, don't do anything to allay this suspicion. 

But he walks right up to Charles, offers him what looks suspiciously like a secret handshake (Jake shudders at the thrill of jealously walking down his spine) and says, "'Sup, playa. How're things hanging in the 99?"

"Oh, about the same," Charles says. The grin he wears threatens to make the cap of his skull fall off. "'Playa.' How're things in your neck of the woods at the 16?"

He wobbles his hand. "Comme çi, comme ça, man. We see bad shit but we see it with good people, dig?"

"Totally," Charles says. "I totally 'dig.' Like, I could not dig deeper and harder if I had a shovel."

"Word." He nods to Jake. "Who's your homie?"

"Oh! Fin, this is Detective Jake Peralta, my best-bestie and hero. Jake, this is Fin my... dog.

The man honest to all the gods giggles. Two decades melt off his face. "Not your dog, man... your dawg."

"That's what I said!" Charles says. His voice rises two octaves. "Your dog!"

"Same planet different worlds, baby. It's all good, though."

"So, how did you two unlikely heroes meet?" Jake claps his hands. "Tell me it was when someone decided that they could scientifically program the greatest buddy cop movie of all time. Like, ever."

"Oh, nothing big," Charles said. "I just helped Fin out with a little project he was working on, you know, on my week off. It was nothing major."

"Nothing major home slice says." Fin rolls his eyes. "Nothing major. Lil' dude just poses as a buyer to help me bust a human trafficking ring and his ass says nothing major. You gotta give yourself props, man."

One of the women, a blonde in jeans so tight that they might be the dermal layer of her skin, speaks. "I worked that with them. He was pretty amazing." Her voice is a peaches and cream sweet Georgia drawl and the smile she offers matches it. "Amanda. I work with Fin at the 16."

Jake takes her hand briefly. While Charles greets her with a hug and kiss on the cheek, he sidles up to Fin. "Hey, so... guy who looks like he ought to be a famous rapper instead of drawing a civil servant's salary. What's up with the other lady? The one who can't talk? You didn't, like, arrest her before coming over or anything? That'll put a damper on the evening."

She seems mute, slouches against a wall in less black leather than would make up one of Rosa's fingerless motorcycle gloves and wears the pout on her lip like alluring armor. A cigarette dangles from it and Jake thinks of Amy for a heart pounding instant... not that he doesn't think of her every instant, or that any of them aren't heart pounding, come to think of it. She rolls startling green eyes at him, then back away, seems lost in her own world. "Nah," Fin says. "That's Erin. She's a friend of mine and Amanda's from Chicago. Some shit went down with a friend of hers recently, civilian aid."

Jake winces. "I heard about... all that."

"Yeah, so don't bring it up."

"No kidding... mostly cause I don't want to also bring my lunch up. I enjoyed those eggrolls but... yeah, don't wanna see em again. But here's an idea... how about we work on giving her the best night of her life? I mean, I bet she's in New York to blow off a little steam, right? It's supposed to be my bachelor party. Let's get a little crazy."

He raises an eyebrow. "How crazy?"

"We're talking Borough Park bar mitzvah crazy, my friend."

"Whoa, whoa, dog." Fin raises his hands. "I don't know if we can handle all that, wild man. Our hearts might give out."

"C'mon," Jake says. "You're cool, I'm amazingly cool and handsome... we can make this thing happen. We need to make this thing happen." He fidgets. "I just can't stand to see her standing there all beautiful and sad like a character from a super serious eighties cop show like Miami Vice."

"All right," Fin says. "But just one piece of advice... if those two ladies start drinking? Don't try to keep up. You'll be late to your wedding."

Jake laughs. "My wedding isn't for two more weeks. We're just having the party tonight because of schedule stuff."

"Two weeks?"

"Yeah. It took a while to hammer all the details together but we finally managed to make everything work."

"Then just let em drink or you'll miss your first goddamn anniversary."


	2. Odin and the Ogre

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake and his new companions end up in an unfriendly location. They meet someone and help him live out his fantasies.

Erin and Amanda, in search of oblivion in memory of a lost friend and just a grand ol' time, had drank and brawled their way across Brooklyn, through Staten Island, on down to New Rochelle and into the countryside beyond. They'd danced on tables, thrown back shots and sung the Miranda Lambert and Carrie Underwood duet "Two Black Cadillacs" to the general acclaim of a mostly male audience. They'd been politely asked to leave three bars and outright booted from two more after altercations with the bouncers.

Jake finds, contrary to his previous opinion, that he is not a good time party person. He is, in fact, freaking exhausted.

And that's how he found himself half dead a 2am in a dive called Odin's Ogre. The bartender--Jake doesn't know if he's Odin or the ogre--wears a grey beard spread across his barrel chest and the tattoo of the Reichsadler on his left arm. Between that and the Northern Virginia battle flag behind the bar... well, Jakey "da Jew" Peralta just isn't sure that this is the kind of place where he feels entirely welcome. Fin, having decided that long ago, is napping outside in Charles' sensible Kia Sorento.

A newcomer to the bar, even bigger than Odin or the ogre, seems inclined to change that situation. He settles his nearly four hundred pound bulk onto a stool beside Jake. The smells of beer, sweat and ammonia hang acrid on the air and he can see 88 inscribed right above the Imperial eagle on this monstrous man's anterior deltoid, right at the torn sleeve of his shirt. "Hey," he says. "My friend Tina is in the truck outside. She weighs about a quarter of a ton. If you took her out, about how much would it cost?"

Jake blinks. "Excuse me, my huge and racist friend?"

He rolls his eyes. "My friend Tina. She's in the truck. She weights about a quarter of a ton. How much, man?"

"Still not following." He shrugs. "This is, like, a neo-Nazi word scramble, isn't it?"

The big man sighs. "I am gonna kill Thor for this. Like, literally. With a bayonet." He fixes Jake with a blue, icy gaze. "Thor told me that he wanted to buy some ice off me, tonight--me, Slayer. He said that he couldn't get jammed up again so he was gonna send some rat-faced little Jew to make the buy, someone nobody would ever suspect."

"Are you sure he said, 'rat-faced little Jew,'" Jake says. "Cause I'm pretty sure he said 'suave Semite.'"

"Dude, I don't even know what that means."

"Suave or Semite?"

"Semite. Suave means like, Ricky Martin or some shit. You know... gay."

Jake can't stop the grin spreading on his face. "This is too rich. This is, like, Warren Buffet rich. You're an anti-Semitic goon that doesn't even know what a Semite is? Like, seriously?"

"Yeah, I guess that's the long and short of it." He glances around nervous. "Jeez I hate doing business with you mud-people... are you gonna make the buy or not?"

Before Jake can say anything, a voice like honey and whiskey drips over Slayer's ear. "How about I make the buy, sugar?" It's Amanda. She has the barrel of her Glock 19 jammed into his ample gut. "NYPD. Don't even think about moving."

He does think about moving, but only until Jake jams his boot against the brute's instep. He falters long enough for Amanda's friend Erin to appear like smoke. She's moved across the bar way too fast for a woman in such an abbreviated dress. A snub nosed, pearl handled chrome .32 digs into Slayer's ribs. "It's not worth it, big guy. Just come along peacefully." When he turns appealing eyes on the bartender, she says, "Not tonight. Odin's not gonna back your play."

Jake's eyes light up. So it was Odin after all! Feeling magnanimous, he speaks, "So you gonna be a good little Slayer? We might want Thor a lot more than we want you--especially if it's Thor Heyerdahl."

"I think we can make a deal, then." He glances at Erin. "So you're a cop, too?"

"Yeah, but not from here."

"Damn, they're flying in back up from out of town now?" He sighs. "At least you're sexier than most of the locals--you and the little Georgia peach. I like your dress."

"Thanks!" She smiles. "Sorry we had to meet under circumstances like this. And that, you know, you're you."

"Yeah, I get that lot." He nods to Jake. "Two good things about tonight at least."

"What're those?" Jake says.

"One, I learned what a Semite was. So now I know what people keep calling me when they say I'm anti-Semitic."

"And... does that bother you?"

He pauses philosophically. "Not really, no. It's just good to know."

"Glad to see you're consistent. What's the second?"

"Being pinned between two babes with guns has always kind of been a fantasy of mine." He lets a slow smile spread across his broad, bearded face. "I'm really kinda groovin' on this."

It's more than any of them really need to know. They slip the bracelets on Slayer and, between the three of them, guide the brute outside so that they can call for backup.


	3. Dawn's Early Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jake teaches his new companion a hangover cure. Also the process of dealing with grief.

Jake awakes to dawn’s early light and the form of a woman in spaghetti straps slouched on the foot of his living room futon. She’s smoking a cigarette and her posture seems pensive. Why is Amy out there? He wonders. I know that I’m not in love with her smoking in the bedroom but it’s not like I’d kick her out before the sun comes up for it.

And then some things start coming together. This isn’t Amy. It can’t be. She’s taller and slighter, for one, with skin that is pale instead of tawny. And Amy, besides, has not smoked since she caught pregnant and this female apparition is not sporting a round six month belly under the smoke grey top she wears.

Erin, he thinks. Amanda from the 16’s friend from Chicago, the one’s who’s been going through some shit. He clasps the sides of his head. How much did they drink last night?

Only one way to find out. He creeps into the living room, behind her, and starts like he so often does. A joke seems safe. “Hey,” he says. “So… we didn’t do anything last night, did we? Cause I am, like, super engaged. I am the most engaged person that ever engaged.”

“Yeah, I kind of figured.” She doesn’t even turn to face him. The voice is husky, a whiskey and tobacco rasp. It could have slithered out of any man’s fantasy. Maybe in another life? “Guys who aren’t engaged don’t usually have bachelor parties, right?”

“That is true.” He sits beside her on the futon. “So…?”

“Nothing. Not that I didn’t try. But you are, like you said, super, super engaged.”

“And yet you tried anyway?”

She shrugs slim, white shoulders. “I’m making lots of bad decisions right now.”

“I think drinking as much as we did might have been one of them.”

“Fuck yes. My head is killing me.” She turns enough for him to see her wince. “I’ve tried black coffee and those leftover hashbrowns we got at 4am but nothing’s working.”

“That’s cause you’re dehydrated,” he says. “That’s why a hangover makes you so miserable. Here… come to the kitchen with me. I’ll make you a secret cure. I learned about it from a Bed-Stuy paramedic friend of mine.”

She follows him into the modest kitchen where he prepares orange Gatorade at a ¾ ratio as prescribed to him by Billy “Bones” McGillicuddy. “The guy who told me about this, “Jake says, “has been running ambulances in Brooklyn since the first New York 911 call went out in 1968 and he rode on hearses before then. He told me nothing, and I mean nothing, will call off a hangover like this.”

“And he knows this how?”

“You’d be shocked how many people call 911 for a hangover. Finding a cure seemed prudent.”

She drinks and, within a few minutes, seems to feel more human. “So… wild night, huh? Sorry we ended up at that shithold Odin’s Ogre.”

“Nah, I had fun,” Jake says. “I made a new friend, after all, and got a pretty nice bust out of it.”

“New friend?”

“Hadn’t you heard? To get Slayer to calm down riding in I had to promise him a spot as an usher in the wedding.”

“So you’re going the wife-beater tuxedo route then?”

He shrugs. “It’ll be a fashion statement.” He finishes his Gatorade before broaching the subject. “So, how long are you going to be in New York?”

“Long enough to forget.”

He nods. “I can’t blame you but… sometimes stuff you forget has a way of biting your ass.”

SHe takes a sip. “Yeah, but I’d rather have it bite my ass that just keep… gnawing my guts like it’s been doing, y’know?”

He tries the slang he’s heard Fin using. “I dig. But I bet you’ve left people worried about you.”

“My boss--he’s kind of like a work-dad. He’s probably worried.”

“A work dad?” Jake grins. “I have one of those. Ray Holt. Let me guess… is yours super by the book and boring too?”

“No,” she says. “No. Mine is basically evil and super scary, but also the warmest and most generous man you’ll ever meet.” She smirks. “Hank is a complex guy.”

“Sounds like… but I can see how your eyes light up when you talk about him.”

“Yeah. He saved me and… well, I’d do anything for him, just like I know he’d do anything for me.” She grows quiet a long moment and takes a pull on the morning’s second cigarette.”

“Anyone else you’re missing? Romantic stylez?”

"Yeah," she says. "No. There is someone but... it's complicated. One of those situations."

"I know those situations very well," he says. "You could say that my lady and I are the Josh and Donna of the NYPD. Complicated is sort of our thing.”

She takes a drag on the cigarette and contemplates before saying. “I think when any cop gets involved with another cop complicated becomes their thing.”

“It does,” he says. “It really does. That’s why we should date nice, normal, safe people like pre-school teachers and stock analysts instead.”

“So why don’t we?”

He shrugs. “Because I’m going to spend the rest of my life with literally, and I mean no offense, the greatest woman in the universe. To quote the great poet 50 Cent, I love her like a fat kid loves cake.””

Erin chuckles, one of those throaty things that could send shudders down a lesser man’s spine. “None taken,” she says. “I feel you.”

“So then you know why some perfectly nice stock analyst or pre-school teacher is going to have to do without all this goodness,” he pauses here to indicate a body wrapped in adult-size Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles pajamas, “that is Jake Peralta.”

“Those are some seriously unlucky pre-school teachers and stock analysts,” she says. “And one lucky detective in the NYPD. You told me her name but…”

“Amy Santiago, soon to be Peralta.” He scratches his ear. “Or I might be Jake Santiago. I’m not really sure how it’s going to work out, yet. We might Indian leg wrestle for it.”

She snorts. “You New Yorkers sure are progressive about some stuff.”

“I don’t know about all that. What I do know is that I’ve got a great thing going, and if what you’ve got is half as good with… what’s his name?”

“Don’t wanna talk about it right now,” she says. Even though she is talking about it. “Might jinx things.”

“Okay, sure, sure. Cool, cool. But if what you’ve got with Claddagh O’Fernackerpan--is that his name?”

“No. Oh sweet Jesus God in heaven no.”

“Okay. Still what I’m gonna call him.” He takes a deep breath. “If what you’ve go with Claddagh O’Fernackerpan, Highlander and gentleman, is half as special as what I have with Amy… you’re gonna want to go back. And soon.”

Vulnerability mists her startling green eyes for an instant. “What if I can’t?” 

“You go back anyway because you never know until you do.”

They’re hard again after only a moment. “You’re right. I’ve got to. It’s just… it’s hard. My that… that… you know. I see her everywhere in my apartment. It’s like having a goddamn ghost.”

“Did you love her?”

“What?”

“Your friend. The one who… yeah. Did you love her?”

“Like she was my little sister.”

“Then she can’t be the worst ghost to have around, right?”

Erin shakes her head. “I keep seeing her like we found her, not like she was. I can’t stand it. I want to see my Nadia, smiling and so eager to please, not some torn up corpse with green nail polish.”

“You’re going to have to look inside to find her,” Jake says. “Deeper than where he put that corpse.”

“I’d have died in her place if I could have. Everything that crazy son of a bitch did, I…” She shakes her head. “I’d have taken it in a heartbeat. Without hesitation.”

“Like your work-dad would have done for you?”

“He made me the woman that I am today. Could I be anything other than that?”

“Apparently not even if you try really, really hard,” he says. “But that’s great. The woman you are seems pretty cool.”

She rewards him with a wan smile. “There’s those who might disagree, on occasion.” A heavy sigh follows. “I ought to get back to them, I guess.”

“You really should.”

“I’ve got to get dressed.” She hugs him tight with one arm, the one holding a lit cigarette. Smoke curls around his ear and she presses a brief kiss against his cheek. “Thanks for listening, for getting drunk with me and for a killer hangover cure. I think Miss Amy Santiago might be as lucky as you are.”

“I’m not sure that’s possible, but thanks.” With that she leaves him and slips back into the living room. The sway of her hips proves arresting even for a man who is very, very engaged.


	4. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our favorite dreamers share an early morning conversation about what happened last night.

He taps her name on his cell phone screen. It’s been on his speed dial since the first day they were partners, and only recently it has said things like girlfriend. Babycakes. Sugar-bumps. Now it says fiancee. Soon it will say “wife.”

He smiles at the thought when the call goes through. Her voice floats across invisible waves on the air. “Hey, babe. You’re up early for a day off. You don’t normally find your way out of bed until ten, at least.”

“Yeah, it was a long, weird night last night.”

“Yeah? Oh!” He can almost hear the grin splitting her face. “Your bachelor party. Jeez, you must have had a really wild time if you’re up at this hour. Or…” A frown creeps in. “You really did have a super wild time and you’re just getting in. I can’t tell.”

“We had a lot of fun,” he says. “A lot of fun. Met a couple of friends of Charles’ from Manhattan, got kicked out of a few bars and ended up making an arrest on some Aryan Nation goon at a place outside of New Rochelle called Odin’s Ogre.”

“Odin’s Ogre and the Aryan Nation?” She pauses a beat. “That sounds wilder than a Union City quinceanera.”

“Charles has… this, like, secret life.”

“Charles is an AN? They must have really stepped up their food game since the last time I made a bust at one of their barbecues.”

“Nah,” Jake says. “His friend is this, like, super cool guy that looks like he could be the freakin’ duke of New York. His partner and a friend of theirs came with us, cause their friend has been going through some shit and… well, I am not a good time party person, babe. I thought I was, but I am not. I hope this doesn’t change your opinion of me.”

“Sweetie,” she says. “I knew you weren’t a good time party person.”

“You knew?” Crestfallen.

“Yeah, I did. I just didn’t want to tell you. You seemed so proud of it.”

“Oh. Thanks, I think.” He pauses. “Their friend was that girl from Chicago, the one whose friend got… y’know… by that real freak the 16 got jammed up with a few weeks ago.”

“Yikes. I know this is crazy, considering all that but… did you make her feel better, at all?”

“I think so,” he says. “Maybe a little. I gave her a good hangover cure, at least.”

“From the Bed-Stuy guy?”

“Yeah. I just wanted to let you know that she stayed over at my place and slept on the couch last night.” He winces. “So yeah… I brought a beautiful, vulnerable, more than slightly unstable woman home with me on the night of my bachelor party.”

She’s silent for a long moment. He asks, “You’re not… you’re not mad, are you?”

“Oh, Jake Peralta,” she says. “What a monster. Let’s see… you took what was supposed to be a special night for you and, instead, spent it comforting a fellow cop who’s been to hell and back and, furthermore, gave her a place to crash while she was falling down, dead-ass drunk. Yeah, I could not be more pissed. We’re probably gonna just, like, call off the wedding at this point.”

“Y’know,” he says, “if you keep abusing sarcasm like that I’m going to have to arrest you for, like, battery or something. I am a cop, after all.”

“Dork.”

He considers just calling her a dork right back, but hesitates. Something about his conversation with Erin tugs at him He says, “Just so you know, you’re the one I want to go through time with.”

“Huh?”

“One of the songs we karaoke’d last night--I think it might have been at Odin’s Ogre, or the place we went right before. That was a line from it. I thought about it while we were talking about everything that happened to her friend, this morning and… life’s fragile. I know I joke around, like, a lot. Probably too much, but I wanted you to know that this is something I’d never play about.”

He can hear her wanting to “aww” the phone to pieces, but she fights off the urge. “Dude, you get so maudlin after a night out drinking.”

“Maudlin, maudlin…” He chuckles. “I’m gonna assume that means totally awesome and let it go.”

“Yeah, totally awesome. That’s it.” Someone calls her, right out of his hearing. “Hey, I’m shopping for some wedding stuff with my mom, today, and she’s here. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”

“Sure thing, babe.”

“Awesome.” He drinks every ounce of the sigh she heaves across the airwaves. “I love you.”

“Love you too.” And he does. Their short conversation buoys him, carries him through the aether for the rest of the morning, through the afternoon and well into the evening. It’s an awful world out there, sure… but with Amy living on it he wouldn’t trade this planet for anything. He hopes, sincerely, that Erin makes the connection back home that will help her to feel this way too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another one in the books! Now to write a wedding story... that'll be a fun challenge. It'll help to keep me sane working around my national registry EMT exam, though.


End file.
